


The King of the Jungle

by Claus_Lucas



Category: Mother 3
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Character Study, Childhood Friends, Depression, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, High School, Vignette, listen they just have a lot of wholesome fun together, w/ some angst mixed in, we need more kumatora/lucas bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-23
Updated: 2016-09-23
Packaged: 2018-08-16 22:53:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8120746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Claus_Lucas/pseuds/Claus_Lucas
Summary: When Lucas is a kid, he a meets a girl in the woods with bruises across her arms like tiger stripes and an appetite for anything she can crush between her teeth like a bear. Then they find each other again in high school, her looking for someone harmless to impress, him for a thick shoulder to lean on.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Butch Party Animal High School Dropout meets Harmless Introverted Lover Boy With Depression what happens next will warm your heart
> 
> [you were cool](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZZ7fKC1uNY)

No one likes the color of her hair or the thickness of her shoulders or her habit of cracking her knuckles before answering someone she’s less than fond of (which would be most people). Least of all they like knowing she’s never been made to fear even a little bit, whether it’s because of a failing grade, three months suspension, her name replaced by ‘dyke’ in the school rooster, a beer bottle shattered against her back, or being locked in the boy’s bathroom overnight.

But Lucas thinks she’s incredible.

He’s tried explaining why his opinion seems to diverge so radically from the consensus held by most of Kumatora’s acquaintances and peers, but it’s always been to himself, in the form of fleeting thoughts –her immense but embracing posture, the speed with which her eyes meet his from across a room full of strangers, her colorful choice of lexicon, the surprises she pulls like punches straight to the gut and just as exhilarating– but since he doesn’t know any of her friends and she refuses each attempt he makes to compliment her in any way, he’s pretty much lacking the right situation to structure and understand this colossal yet painfully vague attachment that he’s developed towards her.

Kumatora’s reasons for hanging around him are equally mysterious, held fiercely within her heart and unlikely to leak out. Lucas doesn’t really need an elaboration because he feels validated enough by her presence and, at the risk of sounding selfish, the _exclusivity_ of it.

Of course Kumatora must drag other people to the open theater at midnight and mail them packages containing live insects on their birthdays and sprinkle grated cheese on their nice new coats because she didn’t appreciate a joke they made, but Lucas has somehow never seen them or hard her speak of them so they’re about as enigmatic as what Kumatora does during all those days where she waltzes in and out of class under no agenda but her own.

So Lucas enjoys being the single soul signaled out of the pack, branded by an invisible tattoo or perhaps a scent that she recognized as pleasant enough to approach him on his first day of high school. She’s three years his senior but she’s been held back twice and only on the year that he enrolled had she finally managed to ascend one grade on the academic ladder. Lucas often wishes he was a year older so he could share all his classes with her but as things are they see each other twelve hours a week, which isn’t that bad all things considered. His favorite time with her (besides when they meet outside of school) is art history class –she has a fascinating and eccentric history of her own that only seems to come to light while she’s inspired by the stylistic choices of century old painters.

Kumatora is an individual that’s overflowing with tales and as unbelievable as they may sound sometimes Lucas is confident she’s never told a lie about herself. All her stories are true and they come from every walk of life, invoking emotions from awe to compassion to terror. Kumatora doesn’t seem like the kind of person that’s easy to empathize with and in fact Lucas finds it extremely difficult to relate to her but there is an element in her demeanor –particularly when she’s on a reminiscent roll– that strikes him as strong and intimate and bottomless.

Lucas doesn’t live a very exciting life. He tries to keep his nose out of trouble, looks both ways before crossing the road, counts the total number of his belongings at least once an hour, never shows up to class without his homework finished, eats three meals a day (even if they consist of half a slice of instant pizza), apologizes for the inconveniences of others that aren’t his fault, and wears his sleeves long when his arms might make a few curious and ill-intending people inquire. Overall, he’s the weed-pushing-through-the-cracks-in-concrete type, solid and resilient, remarkably reluctant to be smothered by any force but his own, but he’s also quite forgettable and introverted with no desire to draw any attention to himself when good attention always seems to attract bad attention as well (he tends to fall into the narrow gap between being completely invisible and a recurring bully victim, which means he only really gets picked on when he does something noteworthy).

Those that have noticed their peculiar fraternity have to wonder what drew a blunt, flamboyant, meddlesome, and often aggressive party animal and bordering-on high school dropout to the quiet, anxious, and dutiful Lucas –and what kept her coming back all through their almost three years of friendship (their bond didn’t dissolve after she officially ditched school and ran away to who-knows-where but it’s certainly when she dropped out of most people’s radars and her memory quickly faded to an obsolete status). Some people could suggest that, whatever _her_ deal is, the reason Lucas puts up with it is that he’s too passive to oppose her. Contrary to this, however, anyone that paid enough attention to his behavior around her would find it impossible to ignore how openly _happy_ it is around her. Lucas has a talent for disguising his emotions but he’s far from laughing on demand.

There is a story behind their friendship. It comes in two parts.

* * *

There are some woods near Lucas’s house. Around the time people started pointing out his intense and polemic mood swings, when he realized that his days of assimilating as ordinary, healthy, happy were over and he needed to develop a fresh strategy for diverting the attention of others away from him, Lucas wandered into that thick cluster of trees and got lost in their natural labyrinth. The result was a traumatic experience that left him stumbling over roots in his _dreams_ , the end of an era of innocent exploration and a fitting analogy for the whirlwind years that were to follow.

But before that, Lucas was quite fond of the woods, even thought of them as a huge, conscious friend. He went with his brother sometimes –in fact, it was Claus that first got him to cross the invisible barrier between their garden and the woods, Lucas chasing his much more adventurous shadow because he didn’t want to be left to play alone. Claus enjoyed the woods but he had a fickle attention span and moved onto the next thing he could think of doing while Lucas had to sit under the shade of a tree to really start appreciating it. Eventually Lucas was spending more time in the woods than his twin.

It was during one of those solitary voyages into the belly of mother nature that Lucas ran headfirst into a wall of sticks interwoven with leaves. It was the farthest he’d ever ventured from home and he wasn’t aware of it but he was approaching the other side, where a completely different neighborhood existed.

Lucas’s forehead turned red but it only stung a little bit so he stood right back up and contemplated what had obstructed his path. The wall belonged to a hut, rather crude in appearance but nonetheless sturdy, protected against wind, rain, and cold by the wool blankets that were draped all over it. Pockets of leaves stuck out from between branches to keep them from sliding out of place. An entrance, about a foot higher than Lucas, faced west.

Lucas peered into said opening but the blankets were also keeping any sunlight from entering and an amalgamation of shadows greeted his irises. He placed his hand on the edge, feeling the rough surface of wood and a few smaller twigs tickle his palm.

Right then and there, a figure emerged from the gloom to grab him by his ribs and tackle him. Lucas fell backwards, the air knocked out of his lungs and tears instantly clustering around his eyes. He sniveled as the tears blurred his vision, distorting the silhouette of a girl with charcoal hair and a pearl dress with all its frills torn off.

It took a few minutes for Lucas to recover his voice, which still squeaked as he finally mustered the necessary courage.

“W, w, who?” was all he asked.

The girl hadn’t moved since she’d attacked him except to breathe, deep, constricting heaves that inflated her chest to make her seem bigger than she already was. Her hands were curled into fists and her knuckles buried into the ground. She was squinting, not because she couldn’t see well, but because she was trying to analyze her unexpected company.

“Why?” Lucas managed to croak after waiting, to no avail, for a response.

He tried to wipe his face but his hand was sweaty and he just smeared mud across his nose. The girl hoisted herself off of him and started walking away, back to her handmade hut in the middle of the woods. Lucas scrambled to his feet and watched her, an urge to not let her go leaping from his gut to his throat and moving the machinery of his feet. Like when he first stepped out of his comfort zone to avoid losing sight of Claus.

She reeled around the moment a leaf rustled under his foot and stood tall, on the tip of her toes, with her fists now pressed into her hips. Lucas could see clearer now and he absorbed the details of her appearance. There was a perfectly wild and raw quality to her, as if she had never known the concept of following someone else’s orders or performing certain formalities because people that weren’t her thought it appropriate. Her face was traversed with cuts and her arms (the sleeves of her dress had been ripped off) were covered with bruises like the stripes of a tiger. Her teeth were clenched into a snarling gesture that seemed to say they’d eat anything that could be crushed between them, which reminded Lucas of a bear.

For a creature so young, she was definitely a fighter.

“What is it?” she asked, and from their first exchange Lucas understood that she had a tongue coated in lead.

He didn’t know how to answer her question. He had found her little abode by chance when he hadn’t expected to find another human being in the woods at all. He sucked in a breath of air, nearly choking as it went down his throat. His knees had started to tremble but the soles of his feet were freezing into the ground. He felt like he’d better start running before his whole body became incapable of movement.

It was like she could read his mind, or perhaps just his body language, signals and gestures and he didn’t even realize had significance. In later years, he would learn that she was also an infallible judge of character.

“Well, if you really want to, I guess you can come inside. You seem harmless enough,” the girl said, turning away from him and disappearing into the alcove.

* * *

Their bizarre friendship did not last a year. Lucas hadn’t yet learned her name when she moved away from the neighborhood just on the other side of the woods. She knew _his_ name and he tried asking hers, but this is how that exchange went:

“I’m the king of the jungle! Can’t you see my stripes? I’m in charge here, be it animals or people!”

She meant her dress, which was always stained with thick black streaks no matter the model, but Lucas contemplated the welts that circled her arms like tiger stripes and agreed that, whether that title carried authority or not, she at least appeared the part.

Then he pointed it out, and added what he thought about her denture, swelling with pride when it was met with her approval.

The girl burst into a roar of laughter, leaning close to his face as she proclaimed, “I like that, I like it a lot! Call me bear-tiger then, how about it?”

So she was Bear-Tiger, the self-proclaimed King of the Jungle, and Lucas’s best friend for as briefly as it lasted, though he was never able to tell her.

* * *

Their reunion occurs in high school. Lucas is an avid writer and was surprised to score above average in the writing segment of his placement test so he was assigned an advanced English class. Kumatora met the requirements to avoid having to retake any of her freshman classes but she isn’t a star a student and she landed in the lower tire. Since it’s a mixed class, the teacher wants to nurture a friendly environment that’ll dissuade any sort of hostility or bullying that the age gap might produce. He asks each person to introduce themselves with a brief description, complete with standing up front while they do it.

Lucas frets but he does okay. He gets his name and age through and even mentions his poetic aspirations, though he’s careful to mention that it’s not a career goal, just a hobby. Kumatora is late to the class and arrives after the introductions have ended. The teacher knows who she is and doesn’t seem to expect much from her but she’s given the same chance as everyone else to make a good first impression. Kumatora’s grin is broad and her sense of dress code utterly discarded (from her socks to her earrings, no two pieces of garment match, and her hair is fluorescent pink, which is probably infringing at least one school rule) as she stands in front of the class.

Lucas recognizes her, though. He sees her face and knows it isn’t the first time. She’s definitely changed since he last met her, which is where he struggles to figure out exactly where he’s recalling her from. The pieces fall into place when she recites her name and he feels the flow of oxygen into his lungs stop for a moment, much like during their first encounter. But he doesn’t cry this time.

“Call me Kumatora! Means bear-tiger, in case you were wondering,” she says, and there is an echo in her voice, maybe something only Lucas can hear, like the rumble before a yowl –a kitten that has honed its roar.

_Has that always been her name? Or did she choose it because of–?_

“Hey, cub.”

Lucas resumes breathing. His face rises, reluctantly, to gaze once more upon her haughty expression. She has recognized him, too, but says no further for the time being, selecting the desk directly behind him to sit down. Lucas does not question the nickname he has just acquired, which he’ll continue to hear throughout the next three years and again on the rare occasions where she appears out of nowhere to “check up on him.” It fits quite comfortably into the mechanics of their relationship.

There is another reason Kumatora chooses Lucas, and another reason he welcomes her.

They met as children, this is true, but there is a gulf between then and now that is breached by something else that they identify in the other, immediately, monumentally:

Kumatora is looking for someone harmless to impress, and Lucas needs a thick shoulder to lean on.

* * *

Kumatora grabs Lucas by the back of his collar and starts pulling him towards the stage, overruling his verbal protests with exuberant encouragement.

“C’mon, cub, don’t let life pass you by! You’ll never have any fun if you let fear stop you!”

Lucas grapples with her arm but she’s too strong for him to stand any chance of releasing himself. His shoes scrape the floor as they’re dragged across it, emitting louder squeaks than he wishes others had to hear. The attention in the room is already shifting with the commotion produced by his exclamations and Kumatora’s laughter.

He wants to tell her that this isn’t a situation where it’s feasible for him to be thrown out there and his terror will just melt into the confidence required to lead him through it without collapsing psychologically. She glances in his direction and their eyes meet, and in that moment he is certain that she can see it and, worse yet, she _understands_ it, but her conviction is not dissuaded as she lunges her arm around his stomach and shoves him up the stairs.

Forced onto the stage, he’s stuck between Kumatora’s huge, intimidating body blocking the exit and the microphone affixed to the middle of the pedestal. He reels his head forward and the weight of “everyone” –students, teachers, guests, even a couple of parents– sinks into his system like acid corroding his muscles. He’s in that momentous juncture where his entire body solidifies and a step in any direction can either render him a trembling, incoherent, mess with a flight reflex kicking into gear or actually push him to grab that microphone and do what he signed up for: sing.

With unnatural speed and precision, he evaluates his options and their potential consequences, but running away now sounds about as humiliating as whatever high-pitched, stuttering voice can roll off his tongue when he attempts to recite the lyrics he made such an honest effort to memorize in the past weeks.

Kumatora knows and this is her trap. He doesn’t need to see her face to know she’s smirking just as she does when she’s about to punch an insensitive loudmouth in the face, but there’s a tinge of affection buried behind all that bravado.

Lucas takes a step back, straightens himself to face the crowd completely, and swallows, one big and meaningful gulp that’ll hopefully keep his mouth and throat from drying until he reaches the first break between verses. The spotlight has unequivocally descended upon him and there are people, some amidst that big, varied lot, that’ll recall this event in vivid detail as part of their high school memories. At least Lucas will.

Panic bites his ankles but they’re already moving, his hands are touching the microphone, and the next thing he knows it’s close enough to his face for a murmur to be carried loud and clear through the room. He gets to take one last, deep breath and everything afterwards is instinct and delusion –pronouncing the words in the exact order he remembers from practicing at home, matching the rhythm of the music that flows out of the speakers, and opening his eyes wide but shutting down his mind so he can’t take into account what extends before him or the implications of him actually standing on this stage and singing for basically everyone in school. Everyone he’ll have to face tomorrow and next week and for at least two more years of his life. Everyone’s opinion that he won’t be able to escape once this is over.

He quit for a reason, didn’t he? He went back on his plan to participate in the karaoke, decided that this event, like every event before it, was not the right event for him to try to get people to notice him. He signed up pretty early on, long before most people did, because he had resolved, impulsively he might add, that he might as well put his name on the list. He could always change his mind later, on the appointed night even.

Kumatora catching wind of it hadn’t entered his schematics but she always knows what’s going on, his affairs especially, so it must’ve processed on a lower level. From her encouragement and enthusiasm he knew she was looking forward to it, thought he was doing something good for himself. She’d definitely make a big deal if he decided to cancel but he forgot how capable she is of executing last minute actions and getting her way. In this case, not for her sake, but for _his_.

Tough love can pack a punch.

But he’s here now and he’s going, he falters every once in a while but it’s becoming less recurring, the segments of smooth, steady singing extending their lifespan; and he’s honestly not that bad of a singer; he has no way of knowing in the heat of the moment but he’s making a decent impression. High school kids can be cruel but they’ll at least congratulate him on his courage.

People that had seen Lucas face but not archived it are suddenly making space for him in their mind. More of them are smiling than frowning and there are a few expressions of admiration. Claus is the only one snickering but it’s quiet and Kumatora can see in his eyes that there’s unabashed awe, like he’s ready to clap Lucas on the back and rubs his knuckles into Lucas’s head while saying, “Good job! You _actually_ did it!”

Something warm swells in Kumatora’s chest that’s rare for her because usually people go out of their way to belittle the things she’s proud of. Even if it’s through someone else, she’s living this moment aggressively, lucidly, every last drop of it.

And Lucas sings, all two minutes and forty seconds of it:

_People were mean to you_

_But I always thought you were cool_

_Clicking down the concrete hallways_

_In your spiked heels_

_Back in high school_

_You deserved better than you got_

_Someone's got to say it sometime 'cause it's true_

_People should have told you you were awesome_

_Instead of taking advantage of you_

* * *

Lucas is in bed but not asleep when a beam of fuchsia light illuminates his room. He sits up, startled, then rubs what little exhaustion he’d managed to amass out of his eyes with the sleeve of his nightshirt. He yawns and stretches his neck but he’s physically drained and reluctant to move. The clock on his desk reads two thirty nine in the morning in glowing red symbols.

The light starts to flicker, on and off, and he groans in response, finally getting the message.

“All right, I’m going,” Lucas mumbles despite being nowhere near where the individual summoning him can hear.

Twin glass doors divide his room from a balcony. He lives on the second floor of an apartment complex and the view leads directly onto the street and neighboring houses. Lucas doesn’t go out there often but Kumatora uses the fact that there’s no railing (the cement was already knocked out when he and his father moved in; neither of them has really bothered to ask about it) obstructing its way to shine light directly into his room whenever she wants to talk to him in the middle of the night.

 

Lucas emerges onto the sidewalk with a coat buttoned hastily over his shirt. He didn’t bother changing out of his nightclothes. Kumatora greets him with a wave and a smile, rather weak compared to her usual vigor. Her other hand is clasped across her left cheek, concealing something.

They sit down together on the concrete before Lucas asks his first question. By then Kumatora has lowered her hand, though that part of her face is turned away from him, making it hard to see. The purple ring around her eye and the lacerations across her knuckles, however, are enough for him to worry.

“What happened?” he asks, simple and to the point, trying to keep any emotional inflection from overwhelming his voice.

Kumatora will talk about anything she wants regardless of how much it bothers people but she makes an exception for those she considers friends. She knows there’s no way for Lucas to _not_ worry and there’s a limit to how much sympathy she can elicit before she’s resolved to exit the situation.

Kumatora angles her head a bit and Lucas squints to see through the gloom of the night. The only illumination comes from a lamppost on the opposite side street.

“This?” Kumatora says, her voice low and humorous, like when she wants to downsize the danger of something that is really quite big. “Oh, this is nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

The movements of her mouth allow Lucas to catch a glimpse of the injury she’s been hiding –only a corner of its silhouette, but it’s enough, it’s a clear testament to its severity.

Lucas grabs her face, being careful to place his fingers over her right cheek and chin, not the damaged side. Alarm sparks in her eyes for an instant but she douses it with water, maintaining her reassuring façade. Lucas turns her head so he can see the whole injury.

Terror soaks into his retinas as they contemplate the gash cutting through his best friend’s cheek, starting dangerously close to her eye and ending an inch above her jawline. It’s not thick but it seems deep. The outer blood is in the process of scabbing while a streak in the middle is too raw to heal as easily.

He needs some time to recalibrate his thoughts and Kumatora snatches it up to interject with her tired optimism.

“As I said, this isn’t something you need to worry about,” Kumatora says.  “Not someone like you. Please don’t worry about this, Lucas.”

She uses his name, which she only does when one of their conversations has veered into territory she absolutely refuses to explore, like a warning sign set up by the side of the highway.

Lucas wants an explanation but the last thing either of them need rights now is for Kumatora to run off and deal with this alone, so he sets the subject aside for the time being. There is something else he wants to know, though.

“Someone like what?” he asks.

It takes Kumatora a moment to realize what he’s talking about. She hesitates.

“Someone… just someone like you, okay? People that aren’t like you –me for example– can worry about these things, but not you,” Kumatora answers.

It’s a far cry from satisfying but Lucas isn’t sure how to maneuver around her evasiveness. He should think of a different approach.

Lucas notices the tuxedo she’s wearing. Her coat is unbuttoned and the shirt underneath has been torn in a diagonal slash, exposing part of her sports bra.

His stomach is contorting.

“Why did you come then?” Lucas asks.

Why show up if she knows it’ll make him worry and she can’t even tolerate that?

“Lucas,” she says, back to his name, but it’s different this time, like she’s making sure he knows she’s speaking to him directly.

The warmth of her hand touches his and he glances down. When he looks back up, she’s staring at him intently.

“I just wanted… to see you before…”

There’s an instant there where she’s resolved to say what’s really on her mind but it ends and she’s running away again, as quick and desperate as Lucas runs from a brawl. They each have their weaknesses.

“Before the rumors started. You know that when I’m involved in things there tend to be a lot of rumors circulating at school. I feel like this one is going to brew pretty quickly, maybe as soon as tomorrow, so I thought you should hear it from me first, so you know what’s true.”

She hasn’t explained anything to him but he can’t try to dig up a landmine she just clearly buried.

“Have I ever believed the lies people say about you?” Lucas argues, good-natured.

He’s removed his fingers from Kumatora’s face and she’s released his hand, but they’re both grinning.

“Of course not, but you’re so gullible you might mistake one of those for the truth! I’m just trying to keep your smart,” Kumatora responds.

She ruffles his hair, forcing a laugh for their sake. She sounds so worn out.

Abruptly, they both stand.

“Promise you’ll get that checked before going to sleep,” Luca says.

“Promise,” Kumatora replies. “Be seeing you, cub.”

“See you, Kumatora.”

* * *

The letter is taped to her front door, which is unlocked but Lucas knows he won’t find anyone inside. He vaguely recalls Kumatora mentioning that her parents are out of town this week.

_I’m going to try to kill myself. Come find me._

It’s signed with her name and an address. No ambiguity whatsoever. Lucas writes it down rather than take the note, just in case someone else happens to come check.

 

Water roars against the shores of mud and garbage. A couple of plants still crop up from the earth every now and then but they’re a dying race. From the bridge there’s a view of the river that’s both overwhelming and pacifying, like witness a disaster from a safe distance but on a much smaller scale, because the actual event would leave most people scarred.

Lucas has stood here before and he’s not keen on hanging around. He had the same thing on his mind back then as Kumatora has now –there aren’t that many good places to kill yourself in this town.

Nobody came for Lucas but he didn’t have the courage to do it anyway. It’s impossible to know how close Kumatora is to jumping, though.

“Hey. I found you,” he says, nonchalant, like it’s an ordinary, everyday meeting between friends.

Or maybe it’s a treasure hunt coming to its conclusion.

Kumatora lifts her heavy arms from the railing and looks straight at him. She’s been crying but her face is dry now. Lucas perceives neither hostility nor relief.

At her most vulnerable, she speaks with no filters.

“Oh, cub, it’s not good to see you, not good at all,” she says, feeling no remorse when Lucas’s face contorts with pain.

“You’ve done so much, tried so hard, and for whom? I don’t deserve this, so please just go,” Kumatora continues.

Lucas tries to argue but she can read everything on his face and she interrupts before he can spit it all out.

“But I want to hel–”

“I am under no illusion that I can save you, Lucas,” Kumatora says, so much louder and rougher than his voice. “I was just here to help you have some good times. You helped me have some good times, too. But you can’t save me any more than I can save you.”

She knows he’s been here before. Lucas feels ashamed of being unable to maintain her gaze.

“You left a letter saying to come find you,” he says, gentle, like a child waiting to be reprimanded for their well-intending mistake.

Kumatora lifts her hands into the air and clenches them into fists. Her arms are shaking.

“You aren’t the one. You aren’t the one that I wanted to care enough to find me,” she says, but she’s no longer addressing Lucas, instead she sounds as if she were scolding herself, angry and exhausted and frustrated.

“Then who?” the boy asks.

“You know, right after running away–”

Her voice breaks, then shudders. Never before has Lucas heard her sob and it’s wrong of him to feel like something he needed to exist unconditionally has just been shattered but the foundation of their relationship has always been Big, Strong Girl and Lonely, Dependent Boy.

She delivers the blow.

“I realized: there’s no one in my life that can make that kind of difference.”

There’s nothing to argue.

“And now I don’t have the courage to go through with it,” Kumatora adds. It’s reliving to hear but there’s no way he can express it. “I’m going home, cub.”

Lucas doesn’t follow her. He doesn’t make sure she goes home. He watches her cross the highway and then he looks away, towards the shores, the river.

Whether his presence made a difference or not feels irrelevant.

* * *

She’s the big sister type of mother, a part-time runaway, an unapologetic party animal, and the bright, bleeding sunrise that can’t decide on its palette but glows brilliantly all the same while most people are asleep. And her humor, it’s top notch –abundant and versatile, always on the tip of her tongue. Lucas understands that in her most serious state she’ll still be joking, and that’s just part of her barricade, unlike him who cries while spilling water and then again while trying to decide whether to fill the glass up again.

Lucas’s face is in his hands so he parts his fingers to look at her. Kumatora offers him a hopeful grin.

She still has bruises across her arms but they’re not nearly as abundant as when she was a child. Her denture is as menacing as ever when she frames it between a sneer, but there are also two teeth missing in the back on the right side and one other on the left.

“Don’t take it so harshly, cub, it’s not the end of the world,” she says.

Of course it isn’t, but Lucas feels like it should be, like he could _make_ it be. Kumatora gives him a playful nudge and he forces himself to smile, for her, to show her she’s helping.

In the absence of anything else to hold onto, Lucas grips the edge of the bench, tight, like it can anchor him, keep him from drifting headfirst into disaster. Kumatora shoves him with the entire side of her torso and he stumbles a little, but this is her way of showing support and he really does appreciate the effort she makes. He’s the only one he’s ever seen her go out of her way to comfort.

Her jawline is a lot more pronounced than when she was little. She has hands that can completely cover his and her arms are bigger every year as they accumulate muscle mass. When people ask what she uses to make her eyelashes that long and pretty she tells them they’re natural.

Kumatora crosses her arms behind her head, leaning as far back as the bench will allow. Her legs are spread apart.

“You gotta have thick skin if you wanna survive,” she says, unexpectedly solemn.

Lucas gazes at her, opening his mouth to respond, but she cuts him off.

“Never mind,” she says, sounding more like her usual self. “Pretend I didn’t say that. You just keep doing you. Don’t try to change yourself too much, you understand?”

Some people you can cry with and some will try to make you laugh until you stop.

Lucas holds her stare for a moment, then nods.

“Good. You’ve got something special, cub. Don’t let anyone change that, least of all me.”

* * *

Eventually she does drop out of school and run away from home for good. She shows up at Lucas’s house the day before disappearing, announcing her plan and asking him if he wants to come alone, but then she tells him that she’s kidding, that she wouldn’t let him come with her anyway.

“Stay in school, cub, don’t do drugs, don’t even touch alcohol until you’re twenty one, and definitely do _not_ give up on your dream of becoming a poet. Trust me, you’ll go places.”

He smiles, weary and sad but heartfelt, and gives her a hug before watching her leave. He doesn’t try to stop her.

Who knows where she’s living now, but she drops by from time to time and Lucas encounters her in the most unexpected of times. She always has an eager greeting prepared for him, a big bear hug, and some kind of autobiographical tale that she can spill when he asks how she’s been doing. There’s never a whole story, just fragments, loosely connected, details such as the names of places and people uncertain. But she’s as good a storyteller as ever and Lucas is immersed in each and every word.

She’s told him about being discovered as a stowaway on a train, working at a farm in exchange for housing after she got kicked out in the middle of a pasture, stealing the cutest, most affectionate baby goat he can imagine before hitching a ride with some girl in a convertible that spoke passionately about pre-colonial Mexican architecture. (The goat, she assures him, loves her immensely and it would’ve been cruel to leave without them. She has named the goat Lucky and they travel with her everywhere now. Lucas gets to see this goat most times she appears and, true to her word, they’re a faithful, dotting creature.)

As it was before, Lucas lives vigorously through Kumatora’s stories and how animated she seems every time she’s in town. Maybe she hasn’t found someone that can save her but she’s doing a much better job of saving herself.

“So how have you been, cub?” Kumatora asks.

“Oh, you know me. Nothing exciting. College, working at the daycare, Friday nights at the arcade. Just the usual,” he responds.

In another life, maybe he runs away with her.


End file.
